“Listen to me, child, for I like your patient ways, and want to give you a friendly warning; you are a stranger in this house, and might stumble into trouble.  Whatever else you do, be sure not to cross Mass’ Elmo’s path!  Keep out of his way, and he will keep out of yours; for he is shy enough of strangers, and would walk a mile to keep from meeting anybody; but if he finds you in his way, he will walk roughshod right over you—­trample you.  Nothing ever stops him one minute when he makes up his mind.  He does not even wait to listen to his mother, and she is about the only person who dares to talk to him.  He hates everybody and everything; but he doesn’t tread on folks’ toes unless they are where they don’t belong.  He is like a rattlesnake that crawls in his own track, and bites everything that meddles or crosses his trail.  Above everything, child, for the love of peace and heaven, don’t argue with him!  If he says black is white, don’t contradict him; and if he swears water runs up stream, let him swear, and don’t know it runs down.  Keep out of his sight, and you will do well enough, but once make him mad and you had better fight Satan hand to hand with red-hot pitchforks!  Everybody is afraid of him, and gives way to him, and you must do like the balance that have to deal with him.  I nursed him; but I would rather put my head in a wolf’s jaws than stir him up; and God knows I wish he had died when he was a baby, instead of living to grow up the sinful, swearing, raging devil he is!  Now mind what I say.  I am not given to talking, but this time it is for your good.  Mind what I tell you, child; and if you want to have peace, keep out of his way.”

She left the room abruptly, and the orphan lay in the gathering gloom of twilight, perplexed, distressed, and wondering how she could avoid all the angularities of this amiable character, under whose roof fate seemed to have deposited her.

CHAPTER V.

At length, by the aid of crutches, Edna was able to leave the room where she had been so long confined, and explore the house in which every day discovered some new charm.  The parlors and sitting-room opened on a long, arched veranda, which extended around two sides of the building, and was paved with variegated tiles; while the stained-glass doors of the dining-room, with its lofty frescoed ceiling and deep bow-windows, led by two white marble steps out on the terrace, whence two more steps showed the beginning of a serpentine gravel walk winding down to an octagonal hot-house, surmounted by a richly carved pagoda-roof.  Two sentinel statues—­a Bacchus and Bacchante—­placed on the terrace, guarded the entrance to the dining-room; and in front of the house, where a sculptured Triton threw jets of water into a gleaming circular basin, a pair of crouching monsters glared from the steps.  When Edna first found herself before these grim doorkeepers, she started back in unfeigned terror, and could scarcely